


To Crush You in My Dreams

by blackrose_juri



Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam Prompts [2]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, CW: Sleep Paralysis, Gen, Horror, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Dream, cw: ianthe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26641936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrose_juri/pseuds/blackrose_juri
Summary: Ianthe dreams of Coronabeth. It's not a nice dream.(HtN spoilers up to ch. 27)
Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam Prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1938241
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	To Crush You in My Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! This awful, awful idea was inspired by The People's Tomb Fic Jam. The prompt was "dream," so, naturally, I thought, "Ianthe sleep paralysis angst." I'm sorry in advance. 
> 
> Proceed with caution, by the way! Sleep paralysis is no joke (I deal with it from time to time), and it's the main theme of this piece, so if that might bother you, feel free to back away. There's some body horror, too, but nothing more intense than anything in the actual books.

Ianthe opens her eyes in a dream.

It isn’t safe.

The stillness of it awakens suspicion. There’s danger in the chilling absence of fantasy and lavish memory. There’s an unsettling mundanity in imagining her Mithraeum bed beneath her, the room the same as it always has been.

It’s the way her body ignores her signals, the way her extremities become foreign entities, attached to her yet existing somewhere far away. She still feels them, but only through several layers of imaginary callouses. There’s the deadened, metallic touch of her gilded hand, draped over her heart, and the faint, gentle caress of bedsheets against her outstretched human fingertips. The whole of her is heavy.

She lies on her back with both knees pointed left, one draped over the other, her head lolled in the same direction. She imagines that she must look like a work of art, so tastefully splayed, but—

It isn’t safe, and the vigilant part of her brain repeats that conclusion, tries to kick her back into wakefulness, but it, too, has been shoved down by an unkind blanket of sleep.

_Wake up._

Her eyes are stuck on the portrait of Valancy Trinit that hangs above her dresser on the far wall. Ianthe knows that painting like the back of her hand. She’s memorized that round face and that low, sensuous stare, pinned it into her memory for future reference, but there’s something wrong with it tonight. Instinct tickles at the back of her neck. A pressure builds in the blue-gray darkness—ominous, silent—and that pressure works its way to the back of her throat. She has the urge to swallow, but she can’t, and the frustration makes her heart pound.

_No. Wake up._

_Useless flesh._

There’s a crunch, and the portrait begins to alter, to crack. Little pieces of it flake away and fall to the wooden dresser below, and it’s with gripping horror that she recognizes the pattern in the aberration—two sets of five holes punched through the surface: one through the cavalier’s flawless neck, the other through the ridiculous fruit propped in her palm.

Fingers.

Ten slender, lustrous fingers poke through the cracks and curl over the edges, each one laden with glimmering rings, and she identifies those hands long before the palms and wrists breach, before they entirely rend Valancy’s head from her nude body. They twitch, they seize, and for a moment that stretches, anomalous in time, they stall.

The sound of Ianthe’s breath fills her ears like wads of cotton. She calls to her left hand. It responds, but weakly; the index finger quivers.

The movement isn’t enough to rouse her, however, and the portrait releases more of the horrible entity, continuing as if satisfied by her failure. The right arm creeps forward through Valancy’s melon and bends at the elbow. Fat chunks of paint and canvas and wood pop from the frame, and the beginnings of a shoulder appear in the dim light, one blonde curl draped sheepishly over it. That same, sculpted limb folds back towards the wall and presses the hand flat-palmed against a colorful swath, and Ianthe already senses what waits behind it, so she calls to her fingers with greater haste, panting, but—

The right hand snaps shut against the portrait’s surface, tears a wide gash, reveals a familiar face as it pulls away. The chin is hers, the lips hers, the nose hers, the brow hers, but all of them are rendered with a warmth that Ianthe herself has sacrificed. The irises glow a hereditary lilac.

Ianthe speaks, not knowing she can until she does, and her voice comes out a whimper. “’Beth?” She hasn’t called her that in years.

Coronabeth’s other arm lurches—forward, down, across—and what remains of the portrait crumbles, leaving its ornate frame around a niche in the wall, large enough to fit Corona and Corona alone. Poised with a predator’s calm, she sits with legs folded beneath her and shoulders hunched forward, and she grips the ledge. She wears a nightgown that matches Ianthe’s. Just like when they were younger.

How long has she been in that hole?

 _You left me._ Ianthe sees Corona’s lips move across the room, but the voice originates at the back of her skull, between the cotton-swab walls of her ears. _You loathe me._

“I saved you.”

Ianthe’s middle finger moves, now, with the index.

 _And yet I age, still_ _powerless._ _Sisterless._

Coronabeth’s legs untangle and slip forward. Ianthe attempts to push her back into the wall, but the dream doesn’t budge.

“I’m still working.”

Her legs slide onto the dresser, off the dresser, onto the floor, and she staggers, straightens, regains her grace.

_You let yourself be distracted._

So many nights, Ianthe has dreamt of reunion and embrace. Tonight, she yearns to crush her sister upon sight. Her stomach twists as Corona approaches, and the off-apple scent of her perfume is vile in the air. Corona regards her with dilated, gold-flecked pupils and reaches for Ianthe’s skeletal wrist, wrenches it towards herself. She holds it high. Her mouth contorts in a sour scowl that no one but Ianthe has ever seen, and her thumb presses hard against Ianthe’s cluster of carpals. Ianthe thinks it hurts, but her nerves return confused.

 _You let yourself_ receive _. This doesn’t belong to you._

“It was a gift.”

_You give me all your gifts._

The thumb presses harder. Ianthe ceases her wiggling. Her body trembles instead.

“’Beth … please.”

Her sister hovers, statuesque and unrelenting, and the gold fragments in her gaze begin to expand; lambent tendrils of color crawl from her pupils to the edges of her sclerae. A heat builds where her fingers meet Ianthe’s arm ( _this doesn’t belong to you_ ), then turns to fire, except there’s no combustion and no dancing orange light to match the pain. Ianthe grinds her teeth and hisses.

And the gilded arm melts.

It melts, and the liquid metal takes the bone with it. It seeps into Corona’s fingertips and climbs, viscous and gleaming, up the veins in her forearm. It paints her skin to match her hair, and it works its way up the side of one cheek ( _you give me all your gifts_ ). Ianthe can’t look away; the searing gold steams as it reaches those eyes, floods them with uncanny royalty. Corona’s eyes are the light of Dominicus, two roiling oceans so brilliant they burn, and Ianthe feels their ire tunnel through her, force out tears that scorch her cheeks, accuse her, expose her, consume her, and—

Something flimsy swats at Ianthe’s hand.

The construct hand. It's intact. 

It responds when she jerks it away.

She’s awake.

“Touch me again, and I’ll take that arm back.”

 _Harrow_.

_Thank you._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
